Shotguns at the ready!

Senior pupils at Bridgewater School have recently been enjoying the experience of Clay Pigeon shooting encouraged by our very own Emma Williams, former President of the University of York’s Clay Pigeon Shooting club.

Miss Williams, who teaches Psychology and Religious Studies at Bridgewater decided to ‘give Clay Pigeon shooting a go’ during her own Fresher’s week at York University and soon caught ‘the bug’. Practising twice a week with the club during her first year resulted in her being elected as the club’s secretary in her second year and then President of the club in her final year. Therefore she was delighted when Bridgewater’s Headmistress, Mrs Nairn gave her the opportunity to pass on her enthusiasm to a group of Yr 10 students at Manchester Clay Shooting ground, only a mile away from the school.

The initial programme ran with nine, Yr 10 students last November and a second program has continued including four from the last group. They include William Clews who is already an experienced rifle shooter. For him the biggest challenge has been changing his mindset – from one which has been taught to aim at the target, to one which encourages anything but aiming at the target!! Rebecca Leech and Katie Brown have been improving in leaps and bounds from where their skills and confidence were in November. Karran Kapur-Walton has proved to have a real talent for the sport and consistently destroys even the most challenging of targets. Harvey Cook joined late but has already made progress in terms of the gun he is able to shoot (he shot with a 28 bore last week and a 12 bore this week which is essentially larger, more powerful and capable of shooting heavier ammunition) and was able to successfully shoot some very challenging targets including a high ‘looper’ and a very fast ‘going away’ bird.

In the future, Miss Williams hopes to enter the students into the annual Independent School Association (ISA) clay pigeon shooting competitions – the grand final prize for male and female “high gun” being a brand new car!”